A blog about an actress, silent film, and the Jazz Age; and occasionally the Denishawn Dance Company, writer Frank Wedekind, his character Lulu, Weimar Germany, Hollywood, the state of Kansas, books, music, art, history and other things sometimes only tangentially related to the heart of the matter, written on a regular basis by Thomas Gladysz, Director of the LBS.

Tullyfest week begins with a screening of the 1933 film "Laughter in Hell" with an introduction by Jim Tully's biographers Mark Dawidziak and Paul Bauer. Copies of their book "Jim Tully: American Writer, Irish Rover, Hollywood Brawler" will be available for purchase from historic Hollywood bookseller Larry Edmunds. Based on the 1932 Tully novel, this hard-boiled, pre-code film stars Pat O'Brien as a wife-killing railroad worker who busts out of prison and takes up with Gloria Stuart. At the time of its release, the film gained notoriety for its no-holds-barred depiction of prison brutality and lynching. It is rarely screened today, and was for many years thought to be a lost film.

2) Bonnie Cashin Lecture REDISCOVERING JIM TULLY: GOLDEN AGE HOLLYWOOD'S HARD-BOILED WRITER and opening of the exhibition THE LIFE AND TIMES OF JIM TULLY – FROM DRIFTER TO CELEBRATED AUTHOR: SELECTIONS FROM THE JIM TULLY PAPERS

For the second Tullyfest event, UCLA Library Special Collections hosts the Bonnie Cashin Lecture by Paul Bauer and Mark Dawidziak, entitled "Rediscovering Jim Tully: Golden Age Hollywood's Hard-Boiled Writer" in the Charles E. Young Research Library Conference Center. Bauer and Dawidziak are authors of the biography, "Jim Tully: American Writer, Irish Rover, Hollywood Brawler" (Kent State University Press, 2011). The lecture will be followed by a reception in Library Special Collections for the opening of the accompanying exhibit, "The Life and Times of Jim Tully -- From Drifter to Celebrated Author" curated by Lilace Hatayama. The exhibit will feature selections from the Jim Tully Papers, including drafts of his novels and first editions, correspondence with Hollywood celebrities, sports figures, writers, editors, and screenwriters, research files for his non-fiction pieces, photographs with celebrities of the day, and mementos of his strong ties to his hometown of St. Mary's, Ohio.

The third Tullyfest event is a free two-hour walking tour that will focus on the locations which were important to Jim Tully's career in the motion picture industry, during the teens through the 1930s. The tour will be lead by Mark Dawidziak and Paul Bauer, who are Jim Tully's biographers and who will be presenting at the LAVA literary Salon at Musso & Frank Grill the following night. Sites on the tour include: Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, Grauman's Chinese Theater, The Musso & Frank Grill, Mark Twain Hotel and the former Chaplin Studios.

The fourth and final Tullyfest event is the LAVA Salon at Musso & Frank honoring "Jim Tully: A Hobo in Hollywood."

There is simply no Hollywood restaurant more closely tied to the city's literary legacy than Musso & Frank--a favorite of Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Fante, Hellman, Hammett, Chandler, Cain, Saroyan, Parker, West, as well as a new generation of luminaries.

On Monday, October 15, you are invited to join Jim Tully's biographers Mark Dawidziak and Paul Bauer for "Jim Tully: A Hobo in Hollywood," a night spent exploring a fascinating Hollywood literary figure who star blazed brightly through the 1930s, and unaccountably faded after his 1947 death.

The son of an Irish ditch-digger, Ohio-born Jim Tully (1886-1947) hit the road in 1901, spending most of his teenage years in the company of hoboes. While chasing his dream of becoming a writer, Tully rode the rails and worked as a tree surgeon, boxer, and newspaper reporter. All the while, he was crafting his memories into a dark and original chronicle of the American underclass. When he began to set his experiences onto paper in a style that was hard-boiled before the genre existed, he became a literary sensation.

At October's Salon, Jim Tully's biographers Mark Dawidziak and Paul Bauer will seek to answer the fundamental question: "Why isn't Jim Tully still a household name?" Tully exploded onto the scene with a stream of critically acclaimed novels, among them "Beggars of Life" (1924), "Circus Parade" (1927), "Shanty Irish" (1928), "Shadows of Men" (1930) and "Blood on the Moon" (1931). Yet the books were out-of-print for decades, their author forgotten.

To answer this question, Mark Dawidziak and Paul Bauer must look to the Hollywood of 1912, to the sleepy little suburb that Tully found and watched grow up around him, as he built his incongruous twin careers as motion picture publicist and independent writer. From his piercing insights into and deep ambivalence toward his longtime employer, Charlie Chaplin, to anecdotes of great friendships with W. C. Fields, Jack Dempsey, Damon Runyon, Lon Chaney, Frank Capra, and Erich von Stroheim, Tully exhibited a lust for life which was only surpassed by his devotion to his craft. By 1930 Tully was a major American author, and had launched a parallel career as a successful journalist. Both his novels and journalistic exposés shook the country and his peer group in Hollywood.

But Tully's novel "Ladies In The Parlor" (1935), was declared obscene and most copies destroyed, and Chaplin successfully prevented Tully's publisher from releasing a biography of the actor. By the mid-1940s, crippling physical ailments and family heartbreak left the writer on the ropes. With his death in 1947, his name quietly slipped from the front ranks of American Letters and into obscurity.

Since 2009, Kent State University Press has been rectifying this long neglect with a series of Tully reprints. And in 2011, it published Mark Dawidziak and Paul Bauer's definitive biography, "Jim Tully: American Writer, Irish Rover, Hollywood Brawler," drawing on new information found in the Tully papers at UCLA Special Collections.

The time is ripe for a revival of interest in this fascinating American character, and we invite you to play a part in it at the October Salon and at all of the October TULLYFEST events.

Also appearing at the Salon is Howard Prouty (Acquisitions Archivist at The Academy Foundation/Margaret Herrick Library and proprietor of ReadInk) with the latest in his popular series of talks on a famous Los Angeles book seller with a history of Hollywood's landmark Pickwick Bookshop. And before and after the formal dinner and Salon presentations, guests will mingle with Hollywood historian Philip Mershon (proprietor of The Felix in Hollywood Tour Company).

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Launched in 1995, the Louise Brooks Society (www.pandorasbox.com) is an online archive and international fan club devoted to the silent film star best known for her role as Lulu in Pandora's Box. Our motto, "To understand just one life, you have to swallow the world." - Salman Rushdie

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This blog is authored by THOMAS GLADYSZ, founding Director of the Louise Brooks Society. It is a continuation of the old LBS blog at LiveJournal, which started in 2002. Please send comments, questions, or material to share to silentfilmbuffATgmailDOTcom